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49 

 

 
ELT FORUM 6 (1) (2017) 

 

Journal of English Language Teaching 

 
http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt 

 
 

THE USE OF THINK-PAIR-SHARE IN TEACHING 

READING COMPREHENSION 
A Case study of the English Teachers in SMKN 1 

Randudongkal in the Academic Year of 2016/2017 

 

Faiza Maulida 
 

English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia  

 

Article Info 
________________  
Article History: 

Received in June 

2017  
Approved in July 2017 

Published in August 2017 
________________  
Keywords: think-pair-
share, cooperative learning, 
reading comprehension  
  
____________________ 

 
Abstract  
___________________________________________________________________ 
This study was conducted to explore the English teachers’ attitude toward the 

implementation of Think-Pair-Share in teaching reading comprehension. The aim 

was to describe the implementation of Think-Pair-Share in teaching reading 

comprehension by English teachers, reveal the difficulties faced by English teachers in 

teaching reading comprehension using Think-Pair-Share technique, and explain how 

the English teachers solve their problem in teaching reading comprehension using 

Think-Pair-Share technique. In this study, I used qualitative method. The 

participants of this research were all of the English teachers in SMK N 1 

Randudongkal in the academic year of 2016/2017. In this research, I used 

questionnaire, interview, classroom observation and document analysis as data 

collection methods. The result revealed that the implementation of Think-Pair-Share 

in teaching reading comprehension was quiet different for each teacher such as 

including all language skills, using game as variation, or implementing Think-Pair-

Share with no variation. This study showed that there were two main problems faced 

by the English teachers: the lack of preparation and students’ limited vocabulary. In 

conclusion, Think-Pair-Share was an interesting and helpful technique that helped 

English teachers in the teaching and learning process. Besides, it helped students to be 

actively engaged in the classroom activity. 

  
 © 2017 Universitas Negeri Semarang 

  


 Correspondent Address: ISSN 2252-6706 
B3 Building FBS Unnes  

Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229  

E-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com  



F. Maulida / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

50 

 

INTRODUCTION 

Reading skill is considered as an essential skill as well as other three language skills. 

According to Alyousef (2006), reading can be seen as an “interactive” process between a reader and 

a text which leads to automaticity or (reading fluency). In this process, the reader interacts 

dynamically with the text as he/she tries to elicit the meaning and where various kinds of knowledge 

are being used: linguistic or systemic knowledge as well as schematic knowledge. In conclusion, the 

reader communicates with the text and tries to elicit the meaning of information that they got from 

it. We are not only reading the text, but also trying to understand what we are reading. Ability or 

skill of comprehending a message in the text is the goal of reading in a language instruction. Reading 

comprehension is the process of reconstructing meaning from text. Process of reconstructing 

meaning is the process of transform the information that is presented and illustrated how the readers 

can show they understand what they read (Sormin, 2011). 

Reading is essential because through reading activity, the students can improve knowledge, 

information, news, attitudes, and wise in thinking (Listiani, 2014). Although reading is a familiar 

activity for students, this skill is still not easy to be mastered. In 2015, Programme for International 

Student Assessment (PISA) revealed that the reading skill level of Indonesian Students is 69 from 76 

countries which has been surveyed. This result was lower than Vietnam which has the level of 12 of 

all the surveyed countries (Natalia, 2016). It indicates that Indonesian students have very low 

average in reading comprehension. Comprehending the texts is not easy for students especially in 

English since they have to give all of their attention to the text. There may be some distractions that 

they face along the reading process.  

Discovering the correct methods is an essential to help teachers in teaching reading 

comprehension to their students in order to make them interest in learning English with the result 

that the goal of teaching reading can be achieved and it will give impact on the improvement of 

students‟ reading comprehension ability. In this study, I chose cooperative learning as an alternative 

in teaching reading comprehension. Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which 

small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to 

improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning 

what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement. 

Students work through the assignment until all group members successfully understand and 

complete it (Kagan, 1994). Think-Pair-Share technique has many beneficial aspects for students. 

This kind of model could help students to improve their communicative skill by discussing with their 

classmates (Sugiarto, 2014). 

 This study is drawing from the theory of Bojovic (2010) as a reference about reading skill. 

Bojovic (2010) stated that “a reading skill is a cognitive ability a person is able to use when 

interacting with the written text”. Some students still find it difficult to master reading 

comprehension as Suparman (2012) explained that “the difficulties in comprehending the texts have 

been the main focused to find the solution” (as cited in Palupi, 2013). Shehu (2015) explained that 

“this difficulty in reading comprehension occurs for many reasons, the three most important ones 

are listed as follows: (1) Vocabulary. New words are seen by students as a great obstacle to 

comprehend a text. It is necessary for students to properly comprehend the words or the vocabulary 

of a written passage in order to be able to decode the message, thus comprehend a written text; (2) 

Working memory. The students often complain of the fact that they cannot recall the information 

they just read. They need to hold the information in working memory long enough for the 

information to be more extensively processed, and often some of them lack it; (3) Type of text. The 

type of text is another factor that influences a lot reading comprehension. It is considered to be one 



F. Maulida / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

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major barrier. Some texts are easy to be perceived some others are very difficult.” To solve the 

problem, teachers need to provide appropriate method to help students. 

This study also used a theory from Kagan and High (2002). “In classrooms in which the 

Kagan Structures are used regularly, students for whom English is a second language learn both 

English and academic content far more quickly and far more thoroughly than when traditional 

instructional strategies are used. With the Kagan approach, rather than planning cooperative 

lessons, we make cooperative learning part of any lesson by including structures”. Cooperative 

learning is a well known method as a successful teaching strategy. Think-Pair-Share, one of the 

structures developed by Frank Lyman and his colleagues at the University of Maryland, can be one 

of the solutions for reading comprehension problem. This structure will be beneficial for students 

since it is one way to incorporate cooperative learning into a classroom in order to give students the 

opportunity to actively process and develop a meaningful understanding of class material (Sampsel, 

2015). 

Reading is a tool for human to be able to communicate with others in the way of written 

form. Unfortunately, since many students still find it difficult to master reading comprehension, 

perhaps the implementation of cooperative learning method will help to solve the problem. The use 

of Think-Pair-Share is expecting that the students will be motivated to improve their ability to read 

well in English. The success of this implementation will be reached if the teachers play their role as 

effective as it should be. 

Various techniques are provided in cooperative learning to help teachers in teaching process. 

One of them is Think-Pair-Share. This technique can be one of the solutions not only to solve 

students‟ difficulties in reading comprehension but also to help teachers by providing appropriate 

technique to teach reading comprehension. There are many previous studies that discussed Think-

Pair-Share in helping students improving their skills. For instance, Narzoles (2012) conducted his 

study on the academic performance of ESL students and the results revealed that the experimental 

group exposed to the Think-Pair-Share strategy had enhanced academic performance after the 

treatment with 15.59 mean over the 11.10 of the control group.and.Bataineh (2015) found that 

students taught using cooperative learning strategies (Co Op-Co Op and Think-Pair-Share) had 

mean gain scores significantly different from those students taught using traditional strategy in the 

delayed posttest which lead to the fact that using such strategies in teaching undergraduate students 

at university enhanced the memorization of the students. Then, Raba (2017) for his research focused 

on improving students‟ oral communication skills in EFL classrooms and he also found that TPS 

made teachers became more aware of the importance of TPS strategy in improving students‟ oral 

skills. Next, some researchers tried to find out the effectiveness of Think-Pair-Share in improving 

students‟ ability in reading comprehension such as Asl et al. (2010) and Khaghaninejad (2015). They 

focused on the achievement of the students in reading comprehension. Their study showed that the 

treatment meaningfully influenced learner‟s reading ability and helped them get higher scores. 

Those examples above showed that Think-Pair-Share used by many researchers in various of 

skills improvement. However, few studies have been done focusing only on the improvement of 

students‟ skills. It means, the research only focused on the result of the implementation of Think-

Pair-Share technique whether or not the technique gave impact on students‟ ability such as in 

reading or speaking. Many previous studies such as I have mentioned before only focused on the 

improvement of students‟ score to indicate the success of Think-Pair-Share technique 

implementation in a certain skill. Only a few revealed the process of cooperative learning 

implementation. Therefore, I conducted a research that focused on the English teachers‟ attitude 

toward the implementation of Think-Pair-Share in teaching reading comprehension. I emphasized 

on the process of the implementation of Think-Pair-Share in teaching reading comprehension by the 

English teachers. The process of implementing Think-Pair-Share in teaching reading comprehension 



F. Maulida / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

52 

 

included how teachers implemented Think-Pair-Share technique in the classroom, what difficulties 

that they might face and how they solved the problems. 

 

METHODOLOGY OF THE RESEARCH 

This research was a case study since the main purpose of this study is to describe the 

implementation of Think-Pair-Share strategy for teaching reading comprehension by English 

teachers. According to Bogdan and Taylor, qualitative method is a research method that produces a 

descriptive data, for example written words or spoken words from the respondents and their 

attitudes (as cited in Widiastuti, 2010). Case study is essentially heuristic; it reflects in the events 

portrayed features which may be construed as a manifestation of some general, abstract theoretical 

principle (Hammersley, 2000). The study was conducted in SMKN 1 Randudongkal. The 

participants of this study were all of the English teacherS in SMKN 1 Randudongkal. There were 

three English teachers; Mr. Budi, Mrs. Ida, and Mr. Toni (all are pseudonyms). The English 

teachers were practitioners of cooperative learning since they usually use the method in their 

teaching and learning process. 

The data in this study were taken from the questionnaire, the interviews, the classroom 

observations, and document analysis. The procedures of collecting data were as follows: (1) I gave 

the questionnaire as soon as I met the English teachers and asked them to write down their answer 

in the blank space; (2) After the questionnaires were done, I conducted the classroom observation. I 

asked the English teachers to use Think-Pair-Share in their class activity; (3) I did the interview after 

the classroom observation was done. The questions were the same as in the questionnaire (essay 

questions) but in addition to the prepared questions that I already had, I made other questions that I 

generated from classroom observations; (4) the document analysis was done throughout the study. 

The document that I analyzed was the lesson plan of the English teachers. Then, the procedures of 

analyzing data in this study were in three steps: (1) Data reduction, I collected all the data from 

questionnaire, interview, classroom observation, and document analysis. Then, I selected and 

simplified the data until it transformed into important data that I used for presenting the result; (2) 

Data display, the data display of this research was provided in the descriptive form. The findings 

were descriptively explained according to what had happened in the field. In this step, I organized 

all the data and described the answer of the problem statement, such as describing the 

implementation of Think-Pair-Share in teaching reading comprehension in SMK N 1 Randudongkal 

and describing the problem faced by the English teachers and how they solved them; (3) Conclusion 

drawing and verification, the conclusion was gained based on the data obtained. 

 

RESULT AND ANALYSIS 

 

The Use of Think-Pair-Share Technique in Teaching Reading Comprehension 

The data were gathered from the questionnaires, the interviews, the classroom observations, 

and document analysis. In this research, there were three English teachers as research participants: 

Mr. Budi, Mrs. Ida, and Mr. Toni (all are pseudonyms). All of the English teachers implemented K-

13 in their teaching and learning process. K-13 or the curriculum 2013 is a recent policy of the 

Ministry of Education in its efforts to continuously improve the quality of education in Indonesia. 

Every class in SMKN 1 Randudongkal used this curriculum according to the policy of the school. In 

this research, I observed all of the three English teachers. Since they had more than one classes, I 

decided to observe two classes for each teacher so I observed six classes in total. The classes were 

chosen randomly based on the schedule and the agreement of the English teachers and the 



F. Maulida / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

53 

 

researcher. Since this research was a qualitative case study, the findings were presented in the form 

of descriptive explanation. Based on the data, I present the findings as follows: 

The Implementation of Think-Pair-Share Technique in Teaching Reading Comprehension 

I observed two classes of XII TKR (Teknik Kendaraan Ringan) they were XII TKR 2 and XII 

TKR 3. All of the students of XII TKR 2 are male while XII TKR 3 there are only three female 

students. From the document analysis, Mr. Budi did not make lesson plan for this meeting because 

both classes would only discuss the questions from examination sheet since they were preparing for 

their examination school. The lesson plan I got from Mr. Budi was the one which he used in the 

previous meeting when he taught the material for semester one such as factual report, offering 

services, giving news, and etc. Instead of English, the lesson plan still used Indonesian language. 

cooperative learning method was not stated in the lesson plan. Mr. Budi used some tools for 

supporting his teaching and learning process such as Laptop, LCD, and speaker. He implemented 

the technique in both classes with the right steps during the teaching and learning process. Mr. Budi 

and the students were discussing the reading section. First, students read the text by their own. Next, 

they were asked to answer the questions with their friends next to them. And then, they came in 

front of the class in pair to explain their answer. In the beginning of the lesson, Mr. Budi did not 

explain the procedure of Think-Pair-Share. He only told the definition to the students briefly. When 

he used Think-Pair-Share technique in his classes, the students were active and enthusiastic. The 

students were not afraid to ask question if there was something that they did not understand. Many 

students have to be chosen by the teacher in order to answer the question, yet there were some 

students who were brave enough rising their hand and coming forward to give their ideas about their 

answer. All language skills were included in Mr. Budi‟s class activities. For instance, writing skill 

when the students wrote some difficult words in the whiteboard and then speaking skill when the 

students came in front of  class to present their answer with the reason. During the lesson, the 

teacher often used Indonesian even Javanese instead of English. He thought that the comprehension 

of the students were the first thing to be concerned in order to understand the material. Mr. Budi 

also gave variation in his teaching and learning process like involving the listening activity. For 

example, if there was a word which the students did not know the meaning, he would open the 

cambridge dictionary in his laptop and together with the students looked for the word. In terms of 

giving compliment, Mr. Budi always did so to those who could answer the question correctly but he 

did not blame those who could not. During the interview, Mr. Budi explained that there were some 

differences among classes he taught such as character and gender of the students. He explained that 

female students were more sensitive than male students so that he had to be careful of what he said. 

For instance, Mr. Budi sometimes used sarcasm as a joke to his male students, but he would not do 

so in a class full of female students. He was afraid if he would hurt their feelings (female students) 

and it would affect their interest in learning in his class. 

Based on all of the data I obtained and analyzed, it was found that Mr. Budi implemented 

Think-Pair-Share technique in the same way in all classes that I have observed. He used the 

technique step by step appropriately. There was not so much variation, yet Mr. Budi was concerned 

more about including all language skills in the teaching and learning process such as reading, 

writing, listening and speaking skill as I have explained above. The use of aids for instance LCD and 

speaker also implemented during class activities. 

 

The Implementation of Think-Pair-Share Technique in Teaching Reading Comprehension Exactly as its 

Procedure with No Variation 

 



F. Maulida / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

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Two classes that I observed in Mrs. Ida‟s classes were X TPHP (Teknologi Pengolahan Hasil 

Pertanian) and X AK 2 (Akuntansi). These classes were the opposite of Mr. Budi‟s classes. Both 

classes were dominated by female students. Mrs. Ida did not make a lesson plan for her teaching and 

learning process. Instead, she used the lesson plan from the last year academic. In the lesson plan, 

cooperative learning method was not stated. The methods used were scientific learning, discussion 

and assignments. There was no specific technique that she would use in her classes. The same as Mr. 

Budi, Mrs. Ida used Indonesian for her lesson plan. During the observation, she did not use aids 

such as power point, video, LCD, laptop, etc while in the lesson plan it was written that she would 

use aids. Mrs. Ida did not explain the procedure of Think-Pair-Share to the students. In Mrs. Ida‟s 

class activities, there were included reading-speaking skill and reading-writing skill. There was no 

significant listening skill. There were no any variations in the used of Think-Pair-Share technique by 

Mrs. Ida. She implemented the technique as appropriate as its procedure. In the teaching and 

learning process, the teacher rarely gave compliment to the students. The students were less active 

and seldom spoke their mind. The teacher often should choose and enforce the students to answer 

the questions. Mrs. Ida also infrequently motivated the students to be brave to give their opinion.  

Related to all of the data I had got, I found that the implementation of Think-Pair-Share 

technique in Mrs. Ida‟s classes aligned with its procedure. In the questionnaire, Mrs. Ida also wrote 

that she always followed the steps orderly. Each class received the same instructions. There was no 

variation when Mrs. Ida implemented the technique. Students stick to the text and then answered 

the questions which given by the teacher. Mrs. Ida also did not use any aids such as LCD, laptop or 

speaker to help her in the teaching and learning activities. She only relied on the handout (LKS) that 

she brought. 

The Implementation of Think-Pair-Share Technique in Teaching Reading Comprehension Combined 

with Game 

The last observation that I did was in Mr. Toni‟s classes. Two classes which I observed were 

XI AK 2 and XI AK 3. For both classes, Mr. Toni did not make a lesson plan to help him in the 

teaching process. The first class that I observed was XI AK 3. This class was dominated by female 

students. The procedure of Think-Pare-Share was not mentioned by Mr. Toni. He asked the students 

to read the text entitled “Cow” and then answer the questions with their seatmate. The students 

presented their answer in the written form. The second class was XI AK 2 and it was also dominated 

by female students. The material discussed was also report text but the teacher used variation in the 

teaching and learning process. For this class, Mr. Toni used a game which it is developed by himself. 

During the teaching and learning process, the students seemed active and enthusiastic to ask the 

group which came in front of class. Yet, the game took a lot of time because all students must find 

the paper; as a result, not all of the group could come forward in front of class to share their ideas.  

From all of the data that I had got, I found that Mr. Toni implemented Think-Pair-Share 

technique differently in each class. Mr. Toni used a game as a variation in the teaching reading using 

Think-Pair-Share technique only in one class while the other class used the technique in the usual 

steps. Also, in the end of the game, the students presented their topic in group not in pairs which was 

contradictive with the procedure of Think-Pair-Share technique. The reason was to make it fast and 

encouraging students so that they brave enough to come forward in front of class and answered their 

friend‟s questions directly. In addition, Mr. Toni used aids in his teaching and learning process such 

as his laptop to input which group that already had come forward. 

Problems Faced by English Teachers and How They Solved Them 



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From the implementation of Think-Pair-Share in reading comprehension, English teachers 

found some problems. It was based on the questionnaire, the interviews and the classroom 

observations two main problems were identified. 

Lack of Teacher’s Preparation 

Two of the English teachers agreed that Think-Pair-Share technique was easy to be 

implemented. Yet, one of them said that this technique rather difficult to be used because the teacher 

was lack of preparation. This problem seemed unpretentious yet it could obstruct the process of 

teaching and learning in class. This was the first main problem that I taught it could give impact in 

the teaching and learning activities. It was found by Mrs. Ida when she taught X TPHP class. When 

I did the interview, Mrs. Ida admitted that she was lack of preparation because she was too busy. At 

that time, Mrs. Ida should have provided some questions for students to be answered. Since Mrs. Ida 

had not make it yet, she had to make several questions right away in the class and it took time. It 

would be better if Mrs. Ida had already prepared the questions before the class began so that she 

would not be confused to think what question should be mentioned. 

Based on that problem, the solution for the lack of teacher‟s preparation was made a good 

preparation. Teachers had to make sure that it was well-prepared for the teaching and learning 

process. English teachers could start to make a good preparation by making a good lesson plan. 

Moreover, as far as I know, teachers were obligated to make lesson plans to help them in teaching 

students. Lesson planning is an important process in teacher trainees‟ gaining experience since it 

forces them to reflect on what to teach, how to teach, and how to evaluate (quoted from Nesari & 

Mina, 2014).  In the case of Mrs. Ida, for the next class she used the questions that she made in the 

previous class so that she did not have to think again what questions should be mentioned.  

Students’ Limited Vocabulary 

The main problem that Mr. Budi, Mrs. Ida, and Mr. Toni mentioned was the lack of students‟ 

vocabulary. Not only from the interviews but also from the classroom observations that I did in six 

classes, it was true that many students had problem with their vocabulary. For instance, in one short 

passage which contained five to six lines students could find more than ten difficult words. To help 

students gained more vocabulary, there were some efforts from the English teachers to solve this 

problem. 

Mr. Budi used an electric dictionary in his laptop to help students understood the difficult 

words that they found in any text. Mr. Budi would ask the students to write all the difficult words in 

the whiteboard so that all of students could see the word list and even could take a note in their 

book. Then, with the help of Mr. Budi, students looked for the meaning of the words together using 

an electric dictionary. The students would read the meaning of the difficult word in English sentence 

and they try to interpret it by them self with the directive of the teacher. Since it was explained in 

English, they would also know more words or phrases.  

Mrs. Ida also used dictionary to solve the problem of students‟ vocabulary. Through the 

interview Mrs. Ida explained that she would ask the students to open their dictionary to help them in 

understanding the meaning of the difficult words. Students relied on their own dictionary to look for 

the meaning of the difficult word. Mrs. Ida would explain what the text was about after the students 

have done understanding the text by them self and then correct them if there any mistakes in 

interpreting the meaning. 

Mr. Toni had another way to help the students to improve their vocabulary mastery. He said 

that he would ask the students to memorize some vocabulary and then test them. However, this kind 

of method was infrequently used by Mr. Toni, so that the result was insignificant. Another problem 

that faced by Mr. Toni was pronunciation of the students. He said that many students still did not 



F. Maulida / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

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speak English correctly. To overcome that problem, Mr. Toni asked the students to often speak in 

English. If they were miss pronouncing, Mr. Toni would correct them. 

Discussion 

 This study revealed that vocabulary was one of the reasons of difficulties in reading 

comprehension. Specifically, the findings of this research showed that from six classes I have 

observed, there were many students that still have problem in understanding new words they found 

in text. It was also revealed by Shehu (2015) that the reasons of difficulties in reading 

comprehension was vocabulary, working memory, and type of text.  

Based on the research, we could see that the use of Think-Pair-Share technique could help 

English teachers in teaching reading comprehension. They stated that this technique was easy 

enough to be implemented on students. English teachers made Think-Pair-Share as a part of lesson 

activity in their class. This is related to the theory I used from Kagan and High (2002) about 

including structures to make cooperative learning as part of any lesson in English classes in order to 

improve students‟ achievement. Still, the success of teaching and learning process depends on how 

English teachers deliver the material to the students. It is related to the way English teachers 

communicate with their students. A good relationship between teachers and students is needed as it 

would be a key of successful learning. Astuti and Lammers (2017) also explained that teachers 

become one of the factors that influences the teaching and learning process especially in the 

implementation of cooperative learning. Teachers‟ understanding of cooperative learning, which is 

part of the rules component, may create systemic tensions in an activity system. Therefore, an 

effective implementation of cooperative learning (i.e., one that enhances learning) through the 

enactment of individual accountability requires support from its social environment, especially from 

the teachers and their understanding of cooperative learning (Astuti & Lammers, 2017). 

The quality of the relationship that the students and teachers have with each other would 

influence some factors such as academic achievement and student motivation. Positive relationship 

improves student behavior and motivation to learn as well as their academic achievement (Yunus et 

al, 2011). However, enthusiasm and motivation of the students were somehow changeable. It could 

be seen from the classroom observations such as found in Mr. Budi‟s classes when students started 

to get bored. English teachers have to be clever enough in order to keep students involve in the 

lesson activity and reduce the gap between the high-motivated students and low-motivated students 

in the teaching and learning process. This problem was also proved by Widyaningsih (2014) in her 

study that the English teacher should also be creative in using interesting activities in order to attract 

the students‟ involvement in the teaching and learning process. 

During the classroom observations, with the use of Think-Pair-Share technique, students‟ 

confident leveled up to some degree. For instance, students would rather come forward with their 

partner than stand alone in front of the class to speak their mind. In every class I have observed, the 

students hesitated to come forward voluntarily if they were alone. Yet, with partner, students would 

be brave enough to show their ideas to others. Related to the previous studies that I have reviewed 

before, Palupi (2013) also revealed that Think-Pair-Share technique made the students feel more 

confident in telling their ideas with their friends.  

From the interview that I had done, it showed that Think-Pair-Share helped students to be 

active and creative. In this case, especially when students were given some questions, they would 

actively participate in the class activity. With their partner, students would seek the answers of the 

questions. Then, they would deliver their answer with their creativity to arrange sentences by their 

own interpretation. The same finding was mentioned by Raba (2017) and Darsana (2010) from their 

study where they found that Think-Pair-Share could make active and creative participation since 

Think-Pair-Share gave students opportunities to show their creativity. 



F. Maulida / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

57 

 

Since the students actively involved in the learning process, the class become alive and fun. 

Students freely spoke their mind whether they wanted to ask something or answer the question or 

maybe gave their opinion about the topic being discussed. Those kind of situation was also found by 

Andik (2013), he explained that during the process of teaching learning using Think-Pair-Share, the 

students were active and enthusiastic. The class was enjoyable and interesting during the teaching 

and learning process. 

From the explanation above, it could be stated that students prefer to work in groups rather 

than individually. Students like to share and discuss their idea with their partner. As the previous 

study done by Lange et al. (2016) explained that the participants of their research were more 

satisfied with Think-Pair-Share technique as they prefer group work that promotes equal 

participants. This „share and discuss‟ activity could give many benefits for students in enhancing 

their ability. This task sharing allows students to be responsible for presenting what they learned 

(production of the target language) and paying attention to their peers‟ presentations. During peer 

interaction, which usually took place between two performances of individual accountability, 

learners provided vocabulary feedback to each other, which also means production of the target 

language (Astuti & Lammers, 2017). The alternation of information between students during peer 

interaction is essential for learners‟ language acquisition and development. 

  

CONCLUSIONS 

 From this study, I can conclude that the use of Think-Pair-Share in Reading 

Comprehension was relatively easy to be implemented in the classroom activity. It showed that this 

technique was appropriate to teach students in reading comprehension. Think-Pair-Share was an 

interesting and helpful techniques as all the English teachers mentioned in the questionnaire and 

also in the interview.  

Through this research some problems were revealed. The first problem was the lack of 

teacher‟s preparation. This problem was mentioned by Mrs. Ida through the interview. Secondly, 

one problem which all of the three English teachers mentioned in the interview was students‟ 

vocabulary mastery. From the classroom observations, it revealed that all of students did not have 

good mastery of English vocabulary. 

The first problem was the lack of teacher‟s preparation. This problem was mentioned by Mrs. 

Ida. For this difficulty, Mrs. Ida tried to solve it by paying attention more about preparing the 

materials before she started the next class. Then, for students‟ vocabulary mastery problem, even 

though all of the three English teachers used dictionary to solve it, they had different version in their 

implementation. Mr. Budi used an electric dictionary in his laptop, Mrs. Ida let her students used 

their own dictionary, and Mr. Toni sometimes asked his students to memorize the vocabulary. 

 

REFERENCES 

Alyousef, H. S. (2006). Teaching Reading comprehension to ESL/EFL Learners. Journal of Language 

and Learning, 5(1), 63-73. 

Andik. (2013). Improving Reading Comprehension By Using Think, Pair, and Share Technique. Universitas 

Islam Malang, Malang. 

Asl, Z.G., Davarlbina, M., & Abdi, R. (2015). The Effect of Cooperative Learning on Improving 

Reading Comprehension of EFL Learners. The Iranian EFL Journal. 11(2), 30-40. 

Astuti, P. & Lammers, J.C. (2017). Individual Accountability in Cooperative Learning: More 

Opportunities to Produce Spoken English. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 7(1), 215-228. 



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